Bewitching Espionage: Trish and Chuck Beguile the Mythos

One Week before Edge of the Earth Ironman...

I had built a dozen decks. Carolyn Fern, Luke Robinson, Daisy, even Carson Sinclair, but they were all either too simple or too complex to play for ten hours. I didn't want to get bored, and I didn't want to turn my brain to goo playing True Magick Blurse Dexter.

So I flipped through my color-coded binders and found Trish Scarborough. Good statline, manageable weakness, and a ton of ways to build her.

Pendant of the Queen? Regular rogue stuff? Big Money? Crafty? Parley Trish? I was overwhelmed by the terror that is Options.

And then I realized... I want to play Breaking and Entering every. Single. Turn. Forever.

Beautiful, simple, elegant, Breaking and Entering (2).

And you can! Let's find out how:

Chuck Fergus + Bewitching = NEVER STOP BREAKING OR ENTERING.

It really is that simple. Not only is it simple, it's a relatively cheap core of cards: 2x Chuck Fergus = 4 xp

2x Lockpicks = 6 xp spent

2x Breaking and Entering = 10 xp spent.

Bewitching = 16 xp spent.

For sixteen xp, you are off to the races. You can build that in Dunwich!

But Neif! Is playing the same card over, and over, and over, and over again really fun?

Yes! Shut up! (Lovingly)

Folks, playing Breaking and Entering every single turn for an entire scenario is great! Playing it ? Amazing! Playing it FREE? Economic! And if we make the jump to Chuck (5) Whoo, Fast AND Free?? Sign me up!

Thanks to Bewitching you will reliably have Breaking and Entering in hand every single game. Once you find both copies (Something Bewitching can help with!) it gets downright silly.

But I hear you, sometimes you must play different cards. The will sometimes cause you to not get B&E(2) Back.

What misery.

Luckily for us, there are so many good tricks to tuck under Bewitching. Pilfer, Scout Ahead can be an all-star, Easy Mark, Slip Away, and you can upgrade these later if you wish. Even better, you can include only a single copy of these cards because you know you will draw them with Bewitching!

Joyous day!

The Deck at level 0

As flexible as the upgrade path. I chose this iteration (With In the Thick of It, we had a Vincent on our team, replace Lockpicks 1 with Thieves Kit and Easy Marks with Grift or Faustian Bargain if not doing ITTOI).

A regular + Intellect seeker. Get Milan down, mag glasses, and investigate everything, you can include cards like Crack the Case or Burning the Midnight Oil.

As stated above, first 10 exp on:

Chuck (2), Lockpicks (1), and B&E (2). If you have In the Thick of It you can probably put Breaking and Entering on Hold and get Bewitching but do not skip Lockpicks, it really will carry you.

Feel free to swap the Obfuscation for whatever you want or swap Hornets Nest for the new "Where's the party?" as it can't whif like Hornet can, but Hornet has stronger synergy with Trish (Arguably). Friends in Low Places can help you dig for Chuck and that might be worthwhile.

Chuck Replaces Milan. Upgrade your Breaking and Enterings. While you will mostly be upgrading existing tricks, if you want to cut things Working a Hunch, Obfuscation, and Magnifying Glasses are the first things to go (in no particular order).

But what about the rest of your exp? Whatever you want.

Upgrade Pilfers, get more Tricks, Upgraded LCC why not? Agility boosts like Hiking Boots and The Moon • XVIII are good. Charisma if you want to bring in Lola Santiago, maybe the composures for stat boosting, Crafty is a great engine that synergizes with Betrick To the Plan and Chuck.

Damning Testimony! Double, Double or something, I don't know! Literally anything!

Heck why not Counterespionage? Or do something silly with Honed Instinct? Maybe you want to run Thieves' Kit instead of Lockpicks! Big money? Sure. Oversuccess? You're doing it anyway!

Live your truth, because Daddy (Chuck Fergus) has an open mind and a vast skillset and he's happy as long as you're happy.

And once you got Chuck and Bewitching? You will be very happy.

The deck is infinitely flexible.

The plan is simple.

The Gameplan

Or, Drawing and playing Breaking and Entering for 10 turns.

Mulligan hard for Chuck Fergus, tossing everything except Lockpicks(1) or your clueving card of choice and maybe keep LCC.

Find an enemy with Hornets Nest or you're playing Innsmouth and they find you anyways, get your B&E(2), play your B&E(2) fast if you can afford it, or 0 cost if you need to be economy minded. If you have Chuck (5) Do both things.

You do not have to anything else! I am not kidding! But the beauty of it is you can do something else. Chuck and Bewitching are such powerful engines you can adapt to whatever the situation at hand it.

Not sure why you'd want to do anything besides play Breaking and Entering though.

The minor setbacks.

This is not a bulletproof plan, however. The deck relies heavily on Chuck, not finding him in your first two turns slows you down, but Bewitching + your useful tricks can float you for a good while. If you really worry about this, Friends in Low Places might be worth it, or include some seeker draw.

Trish is a 2 investigator with only six sanity, if you take trauma or are in a high-horror campaign you will need something like Liquid Courage or Logical Reasoning to keep yourself alive.

Asset hate is bruuuutal for you. Losing Chuck or Lockpicks can be miserable, especially if you're already poor and have been using him to bankroll your tricks. Bewitching, again, helps alleviate this, but go into asset-hate campaigns with this in mind.

If you somehow fail a B&E Investigate that is disastrous! Not getting it back hurts. You absolutely need ways to investigate with your agility, and losing them hinders you in a very real way.

Strongly consider "You handle this one!" at lvl 0 and upgrading to Counterespionage after getting the core to protect yourself.

A lot of this is team-reliant, too. Having a Vincent healing me and a Patrice who spent most of the game tanking the entire Encounter deck helped a lot which meant I didn't have to spend my exp or deckslots on protection, but this deck is very capable at lower player counts, too.

Closing thoughts

I put off posting this for months, and even looking at it now I know there's things I'd change, but this deck played admirably for what is, basically, a first draft.

Is there anything you'd change in the upgrade path or level 0? Have you played Bewitching and Chuck together with different results? Let me know, and have fun playing Breaking and Entering(2) Every turn.

Also, I don't know how the markdown works... Sorry.

TL;DR - Play Chuck Fergus. Play Breaking and Entering Every Turn Forever Do Not Stop Breaking or Entering. Win the scenario.